Perspective: The often overlooked link between drug use and family decline
December 11, 2024
Who are the victims when it comes to “deaths of despair”? Recent research has focused on the racial makeup of these tragedies — drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths and suicides. According to a recent study, the number of Black people and Native Americans in this category has been growing while the number of white people has been going down. A study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that between 2013 and 2022, the number of Black deaths of despair rose from 36 deaths per 100,000 people to 104 deaths per 100,000. For Native Americans, it was 242.
The drug crisis, it seems, comes for everyone. But there are some protective factors. Having connections — to family, to work, to religious institutions — all serve to help people stay off of drugs or support them in a fight against addiction. And now there is a new piece of evidence to support that idea. New research from Hangqing Ruan at the University at Buffalo and his colleagues finds that not only were the death rates of those who are unmarried higher than the rates of those who are not, but also that the difference was enough to make up for other factors. For instance, while higher rates of education are usually correlated with fewer deaths of despair, the research found that less educated married people had similar outcomes to the more educated unmarried.
